Second Lieutenant Robert Kershaw (Regimental Number 406*) lies in Ypres Reservoir Cemetery – Grave reference IV. I. 18. *Officers who were eventually promoted from the ranks may be identified from their Regimental Number. Other officers who were not from the ranks received the King’s Commission, or in the case of those in the Newfoundland Regiment, an Imperial Commission, and were not considered as enlisted. These officers thus had no Regimental Number allotted to them. (continued) 1 And since officers did not enlist, they were not then required to re-enlist ‘for the duration’, even though, at the beginning, as a private, they had volunteered their services for only a limited time – twelve months. His occupation previous to military service recorded as that of an engineering mechanic with the Dominion Iron & Steel Company on Bell Island, Robert Kershaw was a recruit of the First Draft. Having presented himself for medical examination on September 1 of 1914 at the Church Lads Brigade Armoury on Harvey Road in St. John’s, capital city of the Dominion of Newfoundland – a procedure which was to pronounce him as…fit for foreign service - he then enlisted at the same venue two days later on September 3, 1914, - engaged at the daily private soldier’s rate of $1.10 (this including a daily ten-cent per diem field allowance). During the period of training which now was to follow, undertaken on a site adjacent to Quidi Vidi Lake in the eastern outskirts of the city, Private Kershaw was promoted directly to the rank of (acting) sergeant on the 21st of that same month before then undergoing attestation on either October 1 or 2. (Acting) Sergeant Kershaw embarked two days later, on October 3 – the day, in fact, that his promotion to sergeant was to be confirmed – with ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies of the Newfoundland contingent which would come to be known to posterity as The First Five Hundred - onto the Bowring Brothers’ vessel Florizel which was awaiting them in St. John’s Harbour. (Right above: The image of Florizel at anchor in the harbour at St. John’s is by courtesy of Admiralty House Museum.) The ship sailed on the morrow to its rendezvous off the south coast of the Island where she was to join the convoy transporting the 1st Canadian Division across the Atlantic. He had been in England but three weeks when he was seconded to Special Police Duty on November 3, to be absent from his unit for three days. However, any further information a propos this episode does not appear among his files. After that temporary transfer, Sergeant Kershaw now trained with the Newfoundland contingent: firstly in southern England; then in Scotland at Fort George – on the Moray Firth close to Inverness; at Edinburgh Castle – where it provided the first garrison from outside the British Isles; and later again, on May 11, at the tented Stobs Camp near the town of Hawick to the south-east of Edinburgh where a further appointment, to that of Company Quartermaster Sergeant, came on July 31. (Right above: Fort George, constructed in the latter half of the eighteenth century, still serves the British Army to this day. – photograph from 2011) 2 (Right below: The Newfoundland Regiment on parade at Stobs Camp and about to be presented with its Colours on June 10, 1915 – by courtesy of Reverend Wilson Tibbo and Mrs. Lillian Tibbo) At the beginning of that August of 1915, the four senior Companies, ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’, were then sent south to undergo a final two weeks of training, as well as an inspection by the King, at Aldershot; meanwhile the two junior Companies, the later-arrived ‘E’ and ‘F’*, were sent to Scotland’s west coast, to Ayr, where they were to furnish the nd nucleus of the newly-forming 2 (Reserve) Battalion. (Right: George V, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India – photograph from Bain News Services via Wikipedia) *On July 10, 1915, ‘F’ Company had arrived at Stobs Camp from Newfoundland, its personnel raising the numbers of the unit to battalion establishment strength, and thus permitting it to be ordered to active service. The 1st Battalion, Newfoundland Regiment, comprising those four Companies, ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’, was thereupon attached to the 88th Brigade of the 29th Division of the (British) Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. It is likely that during this period spent at Aldershot that Company Quartermaster Sergeant Kershaw would have been prevailed upon, on or about August 12-13, to re-enlist for the duration of the war*. *At the outset of the War, perhaps because it was felt by the authorities that it would be a conflict of short duration, the recruits enlisted for only a single year. As the War progressed, however, this was obviously going to cause problems and the men were encouraged to re-enlist. (Right above: Some of the men of ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ Companies of the 1st Battalion of the Newfoundland Regiment at Aldershot in August of 1915 – from The Fighting Newfoundlander by Col. G.W.L. Nicholson, C.D.) (Right: The image of Megantic, here clad in the peace-time colours of a ‘White Star Line’ vessel, is from the Old Ship Picture Galleries web-site.) On August 20, 1915, the personnel of the 1st Battalion embarked in the Royal Navy Harbour of Devonport onto the requisitioned passenger-liner Megantic for passage to the Middle East and to the fighting against the Turks. 3 There, a month later – having spent two weeks billeted in British barracks in the Egyptian capital, Cairo - on September 20, he disembarked with the Newfoundland unit at Suvla Bay on the Gallipoli Peninsula. (Right: Kangaroo Beach, where the officers and men of the 1st Battalion, Newfoundland Regiment, landed on the night of September 19-20, 1915, is to be seen in the distance at the far end of Suvla Bay. The remains of a landing-craft are still clearly visible in the foreground on ‘A’ Beach. – photograph taken in 2011) (Right: Newfoundland troops on board a troop-ship anchored at Mudros: either Megantic on August 29, Ausonia on September 18, or Prince Abbas on September 19 – Whichever the case, they were yet to land on Gallipoli. – from Provincial Archives) (Right: A century later, the area, little changed from those far- off days, of the Newfoundland positions at Suvla, and where the 1st Battalion was to serve during the fall of 1915 – photograph from 2011) Barely more than four weeks after having set foot on the sand and rock of Kangaroo Beach, on October 21, 1915, CQMS Kershaw was evacuated sick from Suvla Bay – possibly at first ferried to the Greek island of Lemnos – from where, on board His Majesty’s Hospital Ship Dover Castle, he was transported to the Egyptian port-city of Alexandria, to Government Hospital, being admitted there on October 26, suffering at the time from pyrexia (high fever). (Right: The image of HMHS Dover Castle in her war-time apparel, is from the Old Ship Picture Galleries web-site.) Diagnosed in Alexandria as having incurred a case of paratyphoid, CQMS Kershaw was to remain in care in the Government Hospital until he was invalided on December 26, Boxing Day, 1915, on board HM Hospital Ship Britannic - sister ship of Olympic and the ill-fated Titanic. For him the Gallipoli Campaign had come to an end and he was on his way back to the United Kingdom. (Right above: The image of the White Star liner Britannic, seen here also in war-time hospital-ship garb is from the Old Ship Picture Galleries. She was to be sunk in the same area of the Mediterranean in November of the following year, 1916, after striking a mine.) (continued) 4 Upon his arrival in England, CQMS Kershaw was admitted into the 3rd London General Hospital in the southern Borough of Wandsworth on or about January 4. From there, on January 17, he was moved to the Addington Park War Convalescent Hospital, also on the outskirts of the capital city, near Croydon, to be discharged from there to furlough some thirty- five days later. (Right: The main building of what was to become the 3rd London General Hospital during the Great War was opened, on July 1st, 1859, as a home for the orphaned daughters of British soldiers, sailors and marines. – photograph from 2010) (Right: A party of Newfoundland patients, unfortunately unidentified, convalescing at the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth – courtesy of Reverend Wilson Tibbo and Mrs. Lillian Tibbo) After the six-week furlough granted to military personnel recovering from enteric fever* – in CQMS Kershaw’s case from February 21 until April 2 - spent in Manchester with his sister and her family**, CQMS Kershaw was then posted to duty at the Regimental Depot in Ayr - on that same April 2, and was almost immediately again promoted: to Company Sergeant Major on April 5. *Military personnel customarily received a ten-day furlough upon release from hospital. An exception to the rule, as seen above, was if the problem had been enteric. **It would appear that Sophia Kershaw was to pass away in 1914. William Kershaw had died at some time between the years 1891 and 1911. The Depot had been established as a base for the 2nd (Reserve) Battalion of the Newfoundland Regiment in the summer of 1915 some eight months previously and it was from there that re-enforcements were – as of November, 1915 up until January of 1918 – to be despatched to bolster the fighting Companies of the 1st Battalion, at first to the Middle East, and then later to the Western Front.